Dannnnnng. My OCD has molted and returned out of the sand stronger than ever. It's a good thing this only happens once in a while.
The OCD nemesis has snuck up and camphored Miss Shop Organic & Local, Don't Waste and Don't Buy New Unless Necessary.
Tonight is one of those food nights where I throw out everything that I start to make. And it sucks. I suck altoids come to think of it. But not cinnamon. Never cinnamon.
I cut up some raw farmer's market cauliflower for Humanling and I. My idea was this - a plate laid out with slices of boiled egg, raw cauliflower, slices of banana and apple. I started to boil the eggs and then cut up the banana and califlower and noticed that the apples were kinda stewing in something brownish. Ok, no apples. An all white dinner. I put my cauliflower with raw garlic and apple cider vinegar. I'm not a raw foodist unless its fruit. I don't like eating things raw out of the ground - mostly because of OCD. My secondary reason is that it simply tastes better cooked for me.
Upon peeling the eggs, and peeling off half of the layer while doing it (what's the trick anyway to not whittle the egg itself down to a yellow mound with a thin layer of white around it?) something bothered me about the smell. I could smell maple syrup. Only I was peeling eggs and the syrup was safely behind closed fridge doors. Now I used up all the eggs on this. So I threw them out.
It's ok, there's still cauliflower and banana. Hey Humanling! We're gonna do something CRAZY tonight! First half dinner now and second half dinner after we go to the store and buy apples and eggs! And then have those!
I whipped out a new brand of organic peanut butter that I'd bought to lay down with the bananas. Why the torture? Why do I taste things first? Why didn't I treat my last marriage like this before proceeding? Peanut butter was completely stale. My brain is hardwired to have sympathetic taste buds for HL. There was no way in hell she was going to eat this. Yeah, maybe your parents or my parents woulda done this or that but I'm not doing it. I'd rather she not shun peanut butter for all of God's version of eternity because I forced the Foulness of Stale upon her.
Garbage.
Ok, here. A plate with bananas and raw cauliflower. {Huge smile of deceit and falsehood. } Seeeeee? Doesn't that look great? When you're done with that, we'll hop on over to the grocery store and get the rest!
Three bites into it. "The cauliflower tastes funny."
Probably because I soaked it in vinegar to 'clean' it.
..........
Ok, let's go.
..........
So basically, most of that went into the garbage as I told her how fun it would be for me to make pancakes when we got back!
I sliced up an apple for her as a snack (which thankfully didn't have bird crap on it or a spot of anything that would send me into a panic ripple).
Then I started to make the pancakes. *Note* Never put the egg in last.
I cracked the egg into all of the only gluten free pancake mix left within a Not Going Back to the Store radius. And it stunk. Only you wouldn't know it.
Unless you were me and sniffed the inside of the egg shell. Because that's what I do. This is my life. I am not caught doing this ever. The reason being, there's nothing to catch. If someone is in my house while I make eggs, I announce that I'm going to do it. And laugh it off like we all do it. Ha ha ha.
It smelled fishy to me. Forgive my being out of school for 20 years or so but the genus Hens Aquaticus got past me.
Garbage.
I trodded back into where Humanling is patiently waiting for dinner and announce that There Has Been a Mix Up on the Pancakes.
"We're not having pancakes." She says sounding bored.
So I offer the very eggless gluten free mac and cheese or the other gluten free Chinese rice noodles. Then scooped her previously uneaten cauliflower and threw it into a pot with more veggies and am cooking them.
Seriously. I can't stand my CSI of the Culinary Brain issues. I find it hard to believe that I haven't stabbed myself to death out of annoyance during these episodes. Of course, with my luck there would be something like raw egg on the knife already and I'd live to find out about it.
Many times I can stand up to it and say No. I'm not doing it. We'll just take more probiotics or we'll just eat it to prove that it's fine. But then there are nights like tonight where I cry Uncle in one swift egg sniff.
****On an end note after I posted this, I went to finish making the mac & cheese and found that the foil packet of 'cheese' slipped onto a burner that was on. Not enough to burn it, but enough to cake it up inside and smell funny.
Cheese. Garbage.
{Me presenting bowl of food to Humanling} "Um, hello. Well, there was kind of an issue with the cheese."
Humanling: Did something else go wrong?
Me: Well yes. The cheese burnt inside the package BUT (this part said really fast) I put a lot of butter in there and salt and ripped up tiny pieces of soy cheese to melt in it!
***The bottom line - I hear her spoon furiously clinking against the glass bowl. I have managed to feed her dinner again, by the graces of God.
8 comments:
I'm glad you found ultimate success in feeding Humanling. OCD is hard, Anxiety is way hard. But when you go looking for problems, you almost always succeed.
Eggs are awesome.
http://www.wikihow.com/Boil-Eggs
I like to scramble them - I separate whites and yolks and beat the bejeebus out of them with a whisk - until my arms get tired, then a really hot pan, and then you fold them into one another - not whisking, just folding, and then you immediately cook them. They're like three times the volume, and they're sooo good.
Paranoia for health reasons is probably something I could stand to learn. Better late than never, right?
It was close though Ned. Potato chips from Food Bag are also gluten free and eggless. It almost went there.
ha ha...are you saying that the egg shell sniffing will always turn up a mermaid? It's true though. Who sniffs their egg shells??
I've never tried separating egg white & yolks. It reminds me of trying to separate the blue from the whites in my eyes. Is that a talent or do you use one of those apparatus for the segretation of all that is Hen?
Maybe I'd try your recipe out on Miz Ling.
If you aren't already paranoid about health things then I would pass. Really. It's like a plastic toy out of the gumball machine. For whatever reason promising but not worth it.
I just got the title of this post.
Duh, Alan.
Apparently, I'm not paranoid enough about health things. Ahem. Ah well. You can't unmake decisions.
Well, not this kind anyhow.
Separating eggs is pretty easy. Tap the egg longways on the counter or edge of a bowl/cup/other hard container that won't go flying. Do it two or three times - enough to get the crack started at least halfway around. Us the tip of your thumb to poke into the crack,a nd gently pull the shell apart - it should come apart into two rough halves. Open it so that the yolk is sitting on one of them like a tiny little bowl - do this over your container for whites. The whites will try to fall out - your goal is to tip the shell a tiny bit to let the white pull out of the shell-bowl - if you do it right, the yolk will just sit there, and the white will pull itself free. You can also do it with your fingers, but that's a knack - getting the yolk out without putting enough pressure on it to rupture it. You can do that by dumping the egg into your hand also. You're gonna cook it, after all - no germs will survive the process.
Guess who was once employed as a (unbelievably terrible) pastry chef?
And yeah, if you go looking for trouble, you'll usually find it. Look for something gross, and you won't have to look far.
I'm already a kind of picky eater, and mostly ungifted with anything kitchen related. This is probably why my stint as a pastry chef was brief, undistinguished, and canceled by my employer.
Dammit. Now I want some potato chips.
We were up late, weren't we? I have fleas again. Life is so much fun lately.
But you can't sink a cork, right?
RIGHT?
Ned. Get. The. Flea. Trap.
You poor thing! I have a hard enough time getting dinner on the table without OCD getting in the way!
My Mom just taught me a new way to boil eggs. You cover them with cold water, bring it to a boil, then turn off the heat and cover them for about 20 minutes. Then removed the lid and cover them with very cold water (I even add ice cubes to mine) and let them sit for a while. They should peel nicely.
oh my... you poor thing. i have an extremely sensitive sense of smell and i can't eat a lot of stuff because of it. i leave the kitchen when people make tuna and i leave the table when people start with the smelly cheese. it does in one sense limit me, but at least i know the food i eat is always fresh! :)
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